Guide to the 2012 Republican National Convention: Immigration Edition

The 2012 Republican National Convention has begun, and we wanted to put together this guide of what you can expect from the convention, its nominee, and its delegates on immigration.

To begin with, there’s Mitt Romney. Romney tacked to the extreme right on immigration during the primaries, but has hardly mentioned the topic at all since the general election started, since he’s caught between a rock and a hard place in trying to win Latino voters while not angering his base. Good thing we compiled this video of immigration promises that he’s made.

Romney advisor Kris Kobach has led the effort to make the RNC platform an extremely anti-immigrant document. As we noted, Kobach wanted everyone to know he wasn’t just pushing his own agenda. He pointed out that the anti-immigrant provisions are “consistent with the Romney campaign.” We checked it out, and Kobach is right. The platform is consistent with Gov. Romney’s three key positions on immigration:

1. Support for self-deportation,
2. Believes Arizona a model for the country
3. Opposes the DREAM Act.

We will create humane procedures to encourage illegal aliens to return home voluntarily, while enforcing the law against those who overstay their visas.

And, for good measure, there’s strong support for E-Verify to help with the self-deportation process:

We insist upon enforcement at the workplace through verification systems so that jobs can be available to all legal workers. Use of the E-verify program – an internet-based system that verifies the employment authorization and identity of employees – must be made mandatory nationwide.

State efforts to reduce illegal immigration must be encouraged, not attacked. The pending Department of Justice lawsuits against Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, and Utah must be dismissed immediately.

Note: The platform neglects to mention that the state efforts in Arizona and Alabama, among others, have been found unconstitutional.

The current Administration’s approach to immigration has undermined the rule of law at every turn. It has lessened work-site enforcement – and even allows the illegal aliens it does uncover to walk down the street to the next employer – and challenged legitimate State efforts to keep communities safe, suing them for trying to enforce the law when the federal government refuses to do so. It has created a backdoor amnesty program unrecognized in law, granting worker authorization to illegal aliens, and shown little regard for the life-and-death situations facing the men and women of the border patrol.

(Kobach also instituted the “illegal alien” language, which is used here to refer to DREAMers.)

To really drive the point home, the platform included this:

…federal funding should be denied to universities that provide in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens, in open defiance of federal law.

The complete section on immigration is below and you can find the full GOP Immigration Platform here.

Eager to get more of our take on the Republican National Convention? Here are our press statements: